


famous prophets

by Anonymous



Series: boys of the raven variety (my TRC fics) [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam-Centric, Book 2: The Dream Thieves, Codependency, Dark Gansey, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Gaslighting, Gen, I mean there's 'red right hand' but other than that, I wrote this for me but you can read it too, I'll make it one, M/M, Manipulation, Multi, POV Adam Parrish, Pre-Poly, Protectiveness, Well-Adjusted Yandere, and it is!, but it also kind of ended being an Adam character study, is that a tag?, no, non-traditional yandere, the most Adam-centric fic about Gansey you will ever read, there aren't any Dark Gansey fics so I had to make my own, this fic was supposed to be about Gansey, who needs authors notes when you have the ao3 tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24908134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Adam Parrish is right about Gansey all along."Ganseys were creatures of habit, and he wanted Adam here, and he wanted Noah here, and he wanted everyone to like him, and he wanted to be in charge."-The Dream Thieves, Chapter 52
Relationships: Adam Parrish/Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, it's basically pre-poly honestly
Series: boys of the raven variety (my TRC fics) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827523
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36
Collections: Fanfic Anonymous





	famous prophets

It was just Aglionby, in the beginning. Adam wasn’t there, of course, but Ronan had told him. His voice was a slur that guaranteed that future him would present hate him, but at least the gaps in his memory would mean the two would never have to become acquainted. 

“First day he moves into the fucking place...just a shitty mattress on the floor and probably enough dust to keep a mesothelioma lawyer in Gucci for a decade-” 

“Only asbestos causes mesothelioma.” Adam interjects, because he’ll take his victories where he can get them, and maybe he’s lording over some punk with a hangover in progress but the 50 dollar tee hanging off his chest proves more for Ronan than Adam can prove by having perfect grades and three jobs and a chest full of nothing but cigarette butt scars. 

“A fucking _lawyer_ , Parrish.” Ronan had replied, and a bit of beer escapes his mouth when he goes for another swig and a wry sort of chuckle at the same time. It shines at the corner of his lips, a drop of gold in the lording windows of Monmouth, and Ronan lets it sit there for a moment, holding Adam’s gaze with a lazy, self-assured sort of attention. Ronan waits a moment to lick it away, and it’s tasteless and crude in the way that only someone like him can pull off.

Something funny twists in Adam’s gut, and he feels like he’s the punchline of a joke that he’s only making funnier in his attempts to avoid it. Ronan laughs, and Adam tastes motor oil on his lips, black like blood, black like dirt. 

“What did he do? The first night, I mean?” Adam says, and it comes out slow and nervous and everything he hates. 

Ronan raises an eyebrow and sits up a little, just enough to make him feel like the tallest person in a room even when he’s knocked half-down into an alcoholic coma. He shrugs then, and sinks into the couch cushions. He doesn’t put the spectacle of Adam Parrish on trial, and it’s the kindest thing in the world. 

“I come up the next morning, and he’s curled up around a cardboard replica of school. Insomnia’s a bitch.” Ronan waves a lazy hand in the direction of the miniature Henrietta. “Guess Arts-n-Crafts at 2AM stuck.” 

It makes sense, to think that Aglionby was the beginning of it all. Adam had once seen a movie, back when he was still in the public system, and he’s struck by the memory now, the grainy image of a general standing commanding and firm over a table-replica of his territory. The lesson of the movie hadn’t stuck in Adam’s memory, but that image of the general and his little doll-sized spread of his kingdom had. The human brain is formed upon connections, and something about the general was the mirror of boys in raven sweaters, something in the line of their shoulders setting the nobles apart from the serfdom. Boys that said, _First Henrietta, then the press conference or the senate or maybe the Goddamned world_ without speaking a word.

The first time Adam had seen Richard Gansey the Third, he’d known that this wasn’t a boy, this was an _idea_ of a boy, a demigod only adjacent to mankind. Not adjacent, no, _above_. He’d stepped into the halls of Aglionby, and the crowd had parted like the Red Sea. _A God of a boy, a King of Kings._

Sunlight dapples over Aglionby’s cereal-box walls. Dust-motes shimmer in the light, but the miniature walls are freshly-minted clean. 

“Have you ever heard of the canary in the coal mine?” Gansey asks, his voice a fresh and gallant thing that rolls over his surroundings. Adam carefully lifts a complex and rather-threatening contraption from the backseat of the Camaro. A bead of sweat blossoms on his chest, curving a river along his ribs. It itches like a bite. Ronan watches the two of them, sharp eyes upon Gansey in a way that’s not _soft_ but is deathly loyal, and it sparks something terrifying in his spine. It dawns on him that Ronan _belongs_ to Gansey, was just as his as Monmouth or the Camaro or the raven-sweater folded on the driver’s seat. Ronan was Gansey’s, and the magic of Gansey was that Ronan wanted that belonging with an ache so deep it hurt. 

“Miners used them to check for explosive gas?” Adam offers, a sub-par literalism in response to a metaphor; Gansey asking him to read between the lines of a language he doesn’t speak

Gansey laughs, and it’s a little condescending in the way he can never be blamed for. Adam Parrish is something that loses value in translation, but he can’t help that he’s not a currency that Gansey accepts. 

Adam doesn’t want to belong to Gansey, doesn’t want to be defined by him, but if that’s what the transaction takes…

Gansey begins to inspect the surrounding environment, judging a million different metrics with a glance and judging them satisfactory with a soft “hm!”. 

_Do you find me wanting?_ He wants to ask, wants to scream until his throat bleeds, but that’s a question that’s answered entirely by him not knowing how to ask. 

The first time Gansey tries to convince Adam to move into Monmouth, he thinks it’s a sweet but ultimately misguided gesture from a rich kid who doesn’t know better. 

And so Adam tells him no. 

Gansey didn’t shout or cry or threaten him with the prospect of his own imminent demise at the hands of his father. He had just nodded, but there was something sharp in the movement, like cordiality was something that had been weaponized in some testing branch of the US military. 

“Alright”, Gansey had said, amiably enough, but for a second he hadn’t quite looked like Gansey but rather something in the _shape_ of Gansey, like his face was just a mask for something harsh and unyielding peeking at him behind the eyes. “I understand.” 

And then it was gone, and Adam knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him, and Gansey didn’t understand a damn thing. 

“Gansey gets what he wants, eventually.” Ronan had told him, the second time Gansey asked. (It hadn’t been worded like a question this time, but Adam couldn’t have gotten this far if he didn’t know how to trample some grass to make a path.) 

Ronan is a fallen angel, strewn across the lowered shotgun of the Camaro. The path of the sun is geometric upon his form, highlighting his eyelashes, the sharp hipbones from where his shirt had rode up, the even sharper hook of his tattoo; _a boy constructed of sharp things._

Ronan, Adam thinks, is something like a million pieces of shattered glass forged back together, something once smooth that now cut. Adam feels a bit like a knife, sharp once, worn to a dull piece of shit from everything it had to cut through. Adam is angry then, and _oh_ , he is _always_ angry in the way that someone who can’t be is, a million little things shoved beneath the skin, waiting to erupt from the crust and suffocate anything in his wake. _A boy caved-in, a town buried beneath the ash._

Adam lets his fingernails dig crescent-divots into the thighs of his worn jeans. 

“Yeah, and you don’t?” He responds, mind counting the steps until Gansey reached the car, watching him grow closer in the view of the side mirror. His voice hums in a Henrietta droll, and Ronan sits up slow and smooth like a cat in harmony to the tune of the syllables. 

The _thwump_ of Ronan de-reclining the seat is a response of its own, sharp and fast. _Fine, be like that,_ it says. 

Adam wants to backtrack, to apologize, to have said something else instead. _What do you want, Ronan Lynch? What don’t you have?_

Gansey gets into the driver’s seat, and the car door is his window of opportunity closing with a decisive click. The words die in his mouth, and Adam feels them rot under his tongue the whole ride back. 

More and more of Henrietta spreads itself across Monmouth’s floor. _Nino’s, the courthouse, the Dollar Tree._ Of all the things that sprout from cardboard in Gansey’s hands, the Parrish family trailer is never one of them. The observation is something almost like a victory, and Adam will take what he can get. ( _And he does; the bruises are a collar around his throat. He takes all he can, and then he takes some more.)_

When Gansey gets up to talk to the cute waitress on his behalf, it’s something like an olive branch. It’s a demonstration, an offer, a _see what I can do for you Parrish? Look how I can give you what you want?_ It’s something that hangs in the air, imagined enough for deniability, real enough to make Adam’s stomach sink. 

It’s absurd for Adam to think that Gansey is so selfish. It’s absurd, and so he can offer no real protest as Gansey slides out of the booth and approaches the girl, cell-phone in hand. She’s so pretty in the harsh yellow light of the lamps that it hurts, and Adam feels the collar being fastened around his neck. 

Gansey is an addictive substance, and what Adam fears more than almost anything else is knowing how just good the first hit feels. 

And then the girl all but slaps Gansey, righteous fury standing 5 feet tall. Ronan nearly spits out his drink through his nose. Adam is mortified, of course, but there’s also something giddy filling up his lungs like a balloon at the sight of it all. 

The waitresses name is Blue, and she ends up giving Adam her number. Adam is on cloud-9 the whole bike-ride home, and it feels almost as good as anything Gansey could give him. 

It’s not fair to call Gansey a bad person. This is a world of ley lines and sleeping kings and psychic energy, and it’s only logical to assume, fate. Fate doesn’t have _morality,_ but there’s poetic justice in it, a _rightness._

Gansey’s not a bad person, because fate adores him, and fate just _is_ ; it’s not something that can be wrong. 

This is easy enough for Adam to accept, for him to believe in the magic of this demigod of a boy. 

It’s less easy to accept fate hating his fucking guts. 

Being Adam Parrish is an exercise in swimming against the stream, in trying too hard for too little and in oil under fingernails and bruises on his throat and in the pretty waitress making a little “o” with her mouth when she sees the three of them in the shack of mysticality that is apparently her home. 

She looks how Adam feels; angry and frustrated and helplessly curious. Her eyes see Gansey first, and even the tentative look of solidarity she shares with Adam next doesn’t completely sweeten the taste. 

Maybe he should take some extra shifts, sleep even less and get a cell-phone, because fate is clearly running out of ways to send him messages without getting obnoxious about it. Blue is a fresh breeze, she is _potential_ , she is the willpower of telling Richard Campbell Gansey the Third to go fuck himself in a greasy diner, and she is the daughter of family of _psychics_.

_Foolish boy, thinking that this was a girl who had learned to fight fate, for thinking that fate is something you can make for yourself._

“Blue doesn’t do readings; her being here just helps.” The portly woman with a steaming mug in her hand says. (Blue’s mother, Adam’s mind supplies.) He hears the ‘can’t’ where she says ‘doesn’t’, and he realizes that she is just as alone as he is. 

The room is near full enough to be a fire-hazard when Mora reads his card, but to Adam it’s just him and Blue Sargent, fighting fate, Gansey and the world. 

_Make a third path._ Maybe he was quick to judge; fate is giving him a chance after all. Adam Parrish, man of Providence. It’s not familiar, but he’ll just have to make it fit. 

Blue Sargent might not have the second sight, but she can see Adam just fine. He wants so badly to think that he can see her too. 

Cabeswater is a shifting place; the warmth of Blue’s hand in his, the cool dampness of the seeing-tree, the jolt of terror down his spine, gelid and sharp. ( _Are you happy now, Parrish? Is this what you wanted?_ ) 

Gansey exits the tree, and his grin is a twin of the bright Virginia sun. He is Caesar the Triumphator, child of the Gods, emperor of antiquities. 

Blue comes out shaky, lost somewhere behind her own eyes. It’s something awful, seeing this girl who had stared down Ronan and rejected Gansey looking so frail. Adam takes her hand again. It’s something awful, and the two of them are feeling it together. 

She doesn’t tell him what she saw, and neither does Adam. Both of them avert their gazes from Gansey on the way back, though, and that says enough. 

(It’s Ronan that keeps Adam awake most nights, his sharp face somehow smashed into something that can’t punish the beholder with a bite. It’s wrong, so fucking _wrong_ , but the latin comes out as natural as only Ronan can make it.) 

_(Et tu, Parrish?_ ) 

Ronan never calls him ‘Adam’. He never calls Gansey ‘Richard’ either, but Adam thinks maybe he could handle being lesser, as long as he is his own. 

Gansey and Blue lean close in the Camaro. Noah is flickering, Cabeswater is gone, but him and Blue are breathing the same breath and Adam has finally eaten from his hand. Maybe it’s not quite a victory for Gansey, but it sure as hell marks a monumental defeat for Adam. 

Sometimes Adam sees things, except ever since his head hit the porch railing it’s less an occasional occurrence and more a constant shadow in the corner of his vision. 

Gansey is not a bad person, and the woman who hovers over his bed in the church is not real. 

He can’t ignore them, but he can’t prove them either. They tease him, a crack in the mask here, a mournful voice (could have just been the wind) there. 

Denial is supposed to be the first stage of grief. Adam wonders why it hasn’t kicked in yet; like usual, he’s doing all the fucking work around here. 

(It is not just the wind; Adam knows this, and he’s not sure of much else.)

Blue won’t let him kiss her. He is angrier than he can ever remember feeling. It is one thing to have nothing. It’s another thing to be promised something when you have had nothing, and then for it to be taken away. 

Adam punches something, a box maybe. It’s a blur. Blue avoids his eyes when she leaves. He watches her go, and it feels like watching something happen on a screen. 

It is a good thing the church is only busy on Sundays. Adam cries, painful, gasping sobs that feel like a rubber band being snapped in the cavern of his chest. His pillow is damp for days. 

Faced with some rare unoccupied time and an anxious energy in his bones that prohibits sleep, Adam visits Monmouth one Saturday afternoon. Ronan is there. Gansey is not. 

“He’s at the town hall, looking for records or some shit.” Ronan says without getting up. When Adam comes closer, he can smell the sweet, nauseating lingering of beer in the air. 

Chainsaw gives a soft kaw of acknowledgement to Adam and accepts something or other from Ronan’s hand, swallowing it down in a single vicious gulp. 

“Birds of prey not allowed inside?” Adam ventures to guess. 

“Bastards.” Ronan mutters in response, and shifts his legs a little on the couch. It’s not quite an invitation, but it’s as close as Ronan gets. Adam sits. 

Chainsaw watches Adam, intense and judicial. It’s not friendly, but it’s not _unfriendly_ either. There’s something unnerving about it, acutely aware and entirely neutral. Watching for the sake of watching. 

Ronan looks like shit. Adam figures he probably does too, with the amount of sleep he’s been getting. 

He feels like he should say something, like there’s something that he ought to tell the other boy, but he doesn’t have the words to say it. Maybe he would, if his parents were the type to discuss charisma and rhetoric and communications around family dinners. Adam’s life rests precariously on hopeful and treacherous ‘maybes’. 

“What do you think about Blue?” Adam asks suddenly, the words rushing rash and unconsidered from his throat. 

Ronan sighs, and for the first time, he looks at Adam. There is a war playing out upon Ronan’s face, and it is so jarring to see something but stoicism or cruel glee or anger from Ronan that Adam nearly doesn’t recognize him. 

Ronan’s dark eyes stare up at his own, and they are so _vulnerable_ in their conflict that Adam wants to touch them to make sure they are real. He wants to touch Ronan, to assure himself that he’s not just smoke conjured from his fucked-up mind. The memory of Blue’s rejection still _throbs_ , though, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t trust himself to touch anyone right now. 

Ronan jolts back into some semblance of his normal self, a hasty donning of a familiar mask. Whether the war is still raging, Adam can’t tell; Ronan has let smoke cloud the distant fields of his face.

“I think,” Ronan says, his voice just a little too acidic to be natural, “that someone ought to warn her.” 

Adam is too tired to be angry and too defeated to be hurt. He sighs, deep and sorrowful, studying the concrete floor under his worn sneakers. 

“I doubt it’s needed anymore.” Adam sighs in reply, closing his eyes and letting his head fall into the couch upholstery. “I tried to kiss her. She got mad.” 

Chainsaw caws, a soft little sound that draws Adams attention and opens his eyes. Ronan is still looking at him with that shielded expression, like this Ronan is just a projection and the real boy is hiding somewhere behind the lines of his face, crouching hidden for Adam to find and decipher. 

“I wasn’t talking about you.” He says, and then nothing else. 

An hour later, Gansey returns to find Ronan asleep and drunk, Adam gone, and Blue on his mind. 

In Washington, DC, a place made for fake politicians and their even faker spouses, Adam realizes that Gansey is not a good person. 

The party is a trap. 

“Do you want to be like these people, Adam?” Gansey asks, and Adam can lie and say yes, or he could lie and say no. There’s a certain smugness to Gansey’s tone, the assuredness of a man who believes he’s already won. It’s entirely warranted, and the thought is sour in Adams mind. 

_Do you want to be like these people?_ And it comes out sounding like _Do you think you can be one of these people?_ It comes out sounding like _You know you can’t, Adam._

Gansey’s not a bad person, because this isn’t his fault. It’s just another fucking win that he achieves without having to get his patrician hands dirty at all. 

The last vent in the crust of his anger closes, and Adam Parrish explodes. It’s a controlled explosion, and he _hates it,_ hates it like he hates being poor and he hates his Dad and he hates fate for making Richard Gansey III _more_ and Adam Parrish _less._

He _hates_ it because it’s controlled, because even in the midst of his anger he has to tie the line between what he can and cannot afford to do. 

_I don’t need your help,_ he says because he does, and Gansey is entirely unruffled. _I got into Aglionby without you,_ he says, and Gansey is unaffected, because this is never a point of which there was contention. _I got Blue without you,_ and Gansey is suddenly tense limbs and restrained aggression, because it was only not a dispute as long as it wasn’t acknowledged, and Adam had broken that unspoken rule. _I’m going to find Glyndower without you,_ Adam says, and the anger bleeds out of Gansey like helium out of a balloon. 

“No,” Gansey responds, and in the dim light of the hallway, he is light off high cheekbones, gold for hair, a stained-glass window of a saint shining soft-sharp over the sinner below- “You won’t.” He says it, and it’s fact, law, something inevitable written in fate. Gansey smiles, sympathetic in the pitying way Adam hates so much. It’s so much crueler, he thinks, for Gansey to be kind. 

Adam sweeps some figurines worth more than his tuition off a side table, because he cannot hurt Gansey like he wants to, he can’t be his equal like he needs to, but he can use his hands to destroy. He can destroy, and perhaps that’s all fate will ever let him do. He can be the bad guy, or he can be nobody at all. 

_(And nobody would understand, except maybe Ronan, and Adam suddenly knows why Ronan lets Kavinsky haunt him, lets himself race in the streets. Destroying isn’t quite destroying, when it fills something aching and empty inside you.)_

“Fuck you.” Adam pants, all beat up from a fight that never happened. He’s beat-up inside, like his heart and ribs and _self_ have been punched around and shook for spare change. 

“Maybe when you’re less worked up,” Gansey responds easily. He steps closer, as inevitable as ever. “He’s not yours to find, Adam.”

Adam does not want to cry, but as usual life decides to heap several servings of distasteful developments onto his plate anyway. Blue won’t kiss him, he can’t have Glyndower, he can’t have independence- he doesn’t have to say the question out loud, fate and Gansey spare him at least that one indignity- _What can I have?_

Gansey folds him into his arms, and Adam cries over the fallen figurines in the dark hallway, smelling Gansey’s expensive cologne and the salt of his own sobs. 

There is a hand in his dirt-colored hair, stroking softly from the downy back of his neck to the crown of his scalp. 

“Shh,” Gansey cooes, like to a scared animal, “It’s okay, I got you.” _Yeah,_ Adam thinks miserably, _You won’t let me forget._

“I hate you.” Adam mumbles into the silk of Gansey’s shirt. The hand in his hair doesn’t falter, up his neck, resting on his scalp, back down again. 

“No, you don’t,” is the response, and they both know that it’s true. 

Adam steps back, tripping on a ceramic collectible depicting a lord surrounded by a pack of narrow, brown hunting dogs. He leans half back onto the side-table, wrinkling his suit; the beginnings of a bruise blooms where the sharp edge digs into his spine. 

“I wish I had never seen you on the side of the highway-I” His voice cracks, and he heaves involuntarily, an audible sob that shakes through his shoulders and face. He is wrung out like an old dish-towel, and all that’s left is emptiness and _anger._ He’s so angry that it’s almost a tangible thing, something he could reach out and grasp like Ronan does his dreams, a weapon to wield. 

But he can’t, and the blade's only edge is pointed towards himself. 

Gansey watches him, as placid and patient as a saint. ( _No wonder Ronan needs him)._ For once, Adam wishes he would just yell, get angry, throw something, to prove he was human, that he wasn’t really this untouchable God of a boy, that he’s something Adam could ever _be_. 

“I wish I had just minded my fucking business, just biked to school and let you call the fucking tow!” Adam hisses, quiet in volume but a scream in ferocity. 

Gansey blinks, looking mildly affronted. It’s as much of a reaction as Adam has gotten in this whole mess, aside from mentioning Blue (but _that_ had confirmed things, had been a battle for which the casualties were too high for what little was won-) 

“Christ,” Gansey responds, “You’re worse than Ronan; profanity really is the outlet of the masses.” 

It could just be an insensitive comment, but Adam has seen too much, knows that it’s a low, cruel jab. _Oh Adam_ , the look in Gansey’s eyes says, _this hurts me more than you._

 _Real fucking nice_ , he almost spits, but even now shame is creeping into his skin. 

“Real nice,” Adam says, but it doesn’t have the same bite, and maybe that’s the point. He’s done here, he decides, and he barrels himself away in a frenzied burst. The hallway is wide, wider probably than his parent’s trailer, but it feels impossibly tight, with Gansey standing there. _Gansey in his throne, and everything within his shadow his domain._

A hand grabs his arm, iron-tight. 

“Wait, Adam.” Gansey tells him, his grip as firm as fate’s maw. Adam waits. 

He’s looking at Adam, trying to catch his eyes, and before he realizes it has happened, he has them. It’s simply a power he has, something gravitating in his presence. _Don’t be too harsh on yourself_ , a voice that sounds a little like Noah’s whispers in Adam’s mind. _Gansey’s not an ‘if’, he’s a ‘when’. Not your fault._

“You always would have stopped; you know that, right?” Gansey tells him, eyes intense and unnaturally bright in the abandoned night-time corridor. “It’s simply fate.” 

The hand on his arm releases, but Adam lingers a moment longer, dazed and horrified and _knowing_ Gansey is right. 

Gansey puts his warm hands on Adam’s shoulders, leans in, and kisses him on the forehead. His lips are soft and warm, undeniably pleasant. Lips move against skin, a whisper for only the two of them to hear: 

“It’s just in your nature.” 

Adam feels this like an electric shock. A moment, and then he tears down the hallway, a wanted man running in his silk suit and dress shoes, the dizziness of champagne still spinning in his mind. He feels Gansey’s lips like a brand on his skin long after he is out of the other boy’s sight. 

Blue breaking up with him is the worst experience in his nearly-18 years of life. He doesn’t punch the wall, doesn’t do what he would have done if he was Ronan and didn’t face real consequences for the things he did, grinding plaster and paint under skin. This much control is freeing, because it proves that he _can._ It’s a prison, because it reminds him that unlike his friends, he doesn’t have a choice. 

Fighting with Blue is worse than fighting with Gansey by some incalculable measure, because a fight with Gansey is _righteous_ , but in a fight with Blue, she’s just _right._

It’s hard to fail at forming connections with raven boys; failing with someone like himself is nigh-cataclysmic. 

_Perhaps,_ he thinks as his rides his shitty bike home, actively resisting every urge to run over rocks and pop the tires, _it’s not that I’m bad at being a rich person. Perhaps I’m just bad at being a person at all._

The thought is unbearable, but like so many other unbearable things, he has to bear it anyway. 

Adam likes Persephone. It sounds cheesy, but she believes in him, and _him_ especially, not just as an accessory to Gansey. 

Adam Parrish is a hard person to believe in, nowadays. He scraps the idea of getting a cellphone, because here is fate finally giving him the cordial finger loud and clear; three cards, three doomed faces of Adam Parrish. Past, present, future. 

Adam felt the last of hope bleed out of him a long time ago, probably against the corrugated steel side of the Parrish trailer, in the red-brown Henrietta dirt. Stubbornness, though, is a renewable resource, and it runs in Adam’s veins in amounts large enough to show up on a drug test. 

Three cards, three boys in raven uniforms outside Aglionby academy, three jobs to stay in school, 300 Fox Way, three fates spinning, measuring, and snipping the yarn; trouble really does run in those cursed threes.

Adam is not quite brave, but he is stubborn, and considering it’s all he has, it will have to be enough. 

Adam pulls a fourth card. Persephone lets out a fond, relieved little sigh, and for the first time in a while, the number of people who believe in Adam Parrish numbers two. 

After it all, when Kavinsky’s charred corpse has been neatly packed into a body-bag and sent to a morgue, when the only people who would mourn him are either declared brain-dead due to mysterious circumstances or named Ronan Lynch, when they finally all meet, together again, Gansey catches Adams eye like a promise. He smiles, and it is the warmest and realest smile in the world. It settles like ice under Adams skin. It’s a promise, and it’s not one Adam is going to like. 

Gansey claps Adam on the back of the neck in boyish camaraderie. 

“Adam!” His voice rings, authoritative as a king and as persuasive as a spell. Lower, more privately, he says- “May I talk to you for a moment?” 

It’s not really a question. It never is. 

It is easy for Gansey to usher Adam out of hearing-range of the others, because he is _Gansey_ and Adam is _Adam_.

“The magician.” Gansey states when they have found their own corner of Monmouth. Adam’s heart shrivels a little like a dead leaf; it feels a bit like betrayal, knowing that Ronan told Gansey. It feels a bit like betrayal, for Adam to have hoped he would have done anything different. 

Light is streaming through those wide and brilliant industrial windows, painting Gansey godly in gold. Gansey is brilliant, but so is Adam, washed in the _magic_ of Henrietta and Cabeswater and the ley line Adam Parrish is the _magician_ , he is the _eyes_ and the _ears_ , and is something _more_ , something _powerful_ \- something, he hopes desperately, beyond Richard Gansey III. 

“I make my own way.” Adam responds, and with the thrum of Cabbeswater deep in his bones, with summer whispering to him from the sky, his voice is certain and clear. 

“I’m glad.” Gansey says through a grin that has transformed into something darker, something crueler. He is not glad, but he is also not scared. 

“Henrietta is my town, Adam.” He continues, his hand forming a diplomatic motion in the air. 

“You were born in Arlington.” Adam says quietly. Gansey frowns a little, a crease forming between his brows like a chip in marble. 

“You know that’s not what I mean, Adam.” He whispers, soft and sweet. His hand, hot against his skin, moves from his neck to his cheek. A finger brushes ever-so-lightly against the lobe of his ear. It feels as if time itself has stopped, has paused in its tracks for this king of a boy. The golden flecks of sunlight in the air are still above the other boy’s head, forming a the points of a ghostly crown. 

“Adam.” Gansey whispers, his voice strangely choked, and it comes out sounding like ‘ _Cabeswater_ ’. 

“Gansey.” Adam breathes back, torn between reverence and fear. There is no anger, not now; anger could not survive under Gansey’s touch, under his _love_. 

“Gansey.” He repeats, an echo, and it comes out sounding like ‘ _Glyndower_ ’. 

It would be easy, if Gansey was cruel, is something that Adam wants to believe. He had hoped Gansey wasn’t cruel, before he had changed, when he knew less. 

Now, he feels the devotion in Gansey like a sixth sense, something that had nestled its way under his skin along with Cabeswater. Gansey _loves_ , _loves, loves_ , so deeply it is its own song, registering in the universe in harmony with the ley line's tune. It’s a beautiful hymn, something that’s easy to get stuck in the head. 

Gansey leans back, and the world tilts back upon its axis, the dust-motes dance again, and Adam gasps like a drowned man. 

“You can’t- I’m not.” Adam stutters, all bravado melted away under the other boy’s gaze and touch. “You can’t _control_ it. Them _. Me.”_

 _Cabeswater_ , he doesn’t say, but they both hear it just fine. 

“Control is an ugly word.” Comes the response, said with that patricial sort of shrug characteristic of men born great. 

Ronan laughs, loud and sharp, from where he is talking to Noah and Blue. _Ronan_ , Adam thinks, a thought of its own. Ronan is a million little sharp edges, but Adam has thick skin. He could stand to get cut a little, he thinks. He can stand an awful lot, really. 

Gansey follows Adam’s gaze with a soft, sentimental smile. For a moment, they both watch the three of them, Ronan, Noah and Blue. Adam _loves_ them, he realizes. He doesn’t need to say it for Gansey to know. Neither of them do. 

Then Gansey claps Adam on the back with a gallant grin. “Nice talk!” He exclaims loudly, friendly and _innocent_. 

Gansey strides across the room to join the others, to _lead_ them, and Adam is left standing there in the dust-mottled path of the windows. Even through the panes, he can feel the Virginia sun luring sweat on the nape of his neck like a kiss. 

Adam’s eyes are drawn to the cardboard replica of Henrietta, currently in the process of being rebuilt after the break-in. Gansey is a fast worker. That, or he doesn’t sleep. 

There are two new locations in Ganseys town. The first is 300 Fox Way, two boxes hot-glued into one esoteric little amalgamation of a structure; cotton-balls forming the deciduous canopy of the beech tree. The second, still not-quite-finished, is Cabeswater.


End file.
